Prompt: Wedding
Characters: Sozin, Roku
Pairings: Roku/Ta Min, one-sided Rozin
Warnings: This chapter contains (non-graphic) marital rape.
They hadn't even spoken before.
The girl was more than sixty years his junior and shaking with fright. In all honesty, she wasn't even that attractive—but she came from a good (if impoverished) family, and more importantly, she was young and healthy, and that was the only thing that mattered to him. Sozin didn't want to do this more than once.
For a long time now, the Fire Sages had been pressuring him. Never forcefully—they did not dare to order him, of course—but every time he met with them, the topic somehow seemed to work its way into the conversation: Sozin was over eighty and an only child, and he still did not have an heir.
Eventually, even he could ignore it no longer. He'd picked a girl—he'd cared nothing but that she belonged to a loyal Fire Nation family and that she was fertile. It was not even necessary to court her: her parents had been all too happy to grant him her hand in turn for the small payment and high prestige that would come to their family in turn. They had met for the first time on the morning of their wedding.
When he took her to bed that night, it was with a curt order. She cried out in pain when he took her, but did not dare to make another sound even though there were now tears streaming down her face. As soon as he was finished, he ordered her gone, and she fled in a state of half-dress with a distinct limp she hadn't had before. Sozin, for his part, lay naked between the sheets, not even bothering to clean himself up.
He could not stop thinking of another wedding, a very long time ago.
Roku had looked so happy then. It was almost the same as when they had been teenagers, teasing, sparring, taking joy in each other's company—but the one by his side was no longer Sozin, it was some woman, a girl who had always made Roku blush but whom Sozin had never truly believed would come between them, if only thanks to the fact that Roku could not even work up the courage to speak to her.
He'd touched himself then, back in the days of their teens and the night of Roku's wedding, fantasizing his best friend in his arms. The former had been frantic, clumsy, urgent, and afterward he'd lain alone, satisfied and yet at the same time not, wondering whether he dared tell, if Roku would greet the knowledge with a welcome smile or turn away in disgust.
The second time, he had received his answer, and Sozin had lain awake late that night too. He'd shot a fair number of fire blasts at the walls when his hand wasn't busy elsewhere.
Why, he wondered, could he not have what Roku had had, even though he couldn't have Roku?
Sozin summoned his wife to his chambers every night until she conceived. From then on, he did not see or speak to her again if he could avoid it. When his son was born, he named the child but little else, allowing the servants to see to the raising of him. His wife took her own life before the boy was even weaned.
In the end, Sozin died alone.
A/N: Wow that got dark for the prompt that was given.